Lawyers believe that those who want to be pardoned will employ influential lawyers or leverage connections with President Biden in the search for a pardon before the end of his term.
WASHINGTON – Joe Biden, who has issued fewer individual pardons than any president in over a century, is now trying to rush through as many more before his term expires on January 20.
But how does a defendant or a prisoner petition the American chief executive for assistance?
One of the strategies is to be in a friendship circle with the incumbent president or a friend. Another approach is to employ a skilled lawyer to telephone a leading White House staff member. Sometimes politicians or advocacy groups appeal directly to the president as was done before the lame-duck Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly every inmate on death row.
The only person who has the power is Biden, who stirred up a storm early this month when he granted a pardon to his son Hunter Biden. But even as there are only weeks remaining in the 82-year-old Democrat’s presidency, legal scholars who have gone through the process before say it can become somewhat less orderly as Trump’s inauguration nears.
“There aren’t thousands of people who have the political throw-weight or the gravitas to get those,” said Ty Cobb, a former Justice Department official and later special counsel at the White House during Trump’s first term.
“If you are a heavy-hitting lawyer and you get a request from somebody, typically what you need in an applicant is someone connected and wealthy at this late stage of the game because there’s not much time left,” Cobb added.
Amnesty Can Be Granted In Groups Of Offenses Or In Specific Circumstances
Presidents have several means of pardoning: through a proclamation for a type of offense, or through the signing of a pardon warrant for an offender.
In October 2022 and December 2023, Biden signed proclamations that pardoned those who have been charged with marijuana possession regardless of whether they had been charged or prosecuted for the crimes. In June 2024, Biden also pardoned military veterans who were convicted of offenses because of their sexual orientation between 1951 and 2021.
Neil Eggleston, who was the White House counsel during the second term of former President Barack Obama but is not part of Biden’s review, said that clemency for categories of defendants is a policy decision that is usually advocated by interest groups and not people who want to change their own statuses.
“This was essentially a policy decision,” Eggleston said of Biden shortening sentences for people in home detention in the largest single day act of clemency in history. “They probably wanted advocates to push the Department of Justice and the White House into doing this.”
Amnesties are not always to free a person from jail, but to clear a person’s record from years back.
Steinbrenner received his last pardon from President Ronald Reagan two days before the president left office in 1989. Steinbrenner had been convicted for making unlawful donations to President Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign and was fined $15,000 but not sent to prison.
Biden Has Granted Fewest Individual Pardons Since 1900: Doj
Biden is on track to give fewer individual pardons than any president since William McKinley, who was in office from 1897 to 1901, and was assassinated, based on Justice Department data.
Biden’s 65 individual pardons so far is lower than the 74 by President George H.W. Bush who granted pardons during his term between 1989 and 1993.
The last 50 years have seen only one president – Jimmy Carter – issue 534 individual pardons in addition to an unspecified number of Vietnam draft dodgers from 1964 to 1973. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the fourth term president who died in 1945, granted 2,819.
But more are possible.
“In the weeks ahead, the President will also take further actions to deliver real second chances and will continue to evaluate further pardons and commutations,” the White House said on Monday as Biden commuted the sentences for nearly all of the inmates on federal death row.
Earlier this month, Biden also commuted the sentences of 1,500 people who had been placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and also pardoning 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes.
How Do Defendants Or Convicts Ask For Pardons?
Cobb, a special counsel in the Trump White House, said that just knowing the White House counsel is not enough to get a pardon or a shorter sentence through a commutation. But if you know a Biden relative, or someone who was in business with a relative, or who is friends with a former Senate colleague, you might get a hearing, he said.
The applications for a presidential reprieve are made through the Justice Department’s office of pardon attorney. Appointments are approved by the government lawyers and forwarded to the president depending on the nature of the crime and the likelihood of the person to be rehabilitated.
Eggleston said that even if high-profile defendants would have lawyers, they would still come to him for pardons when he was working in the White House. But Obama wanted the Justice Department to review the application and give a recommendation on each of them, he said.
“Once in a while someone would call me and say, ‘I met President Obama at a fundraiser and I told him about this clemency and he said I should talk to you.’” Eggleston said. “They’d come in with all sorts of different supporters, which is politicians pushing for a constituent or business associates maybe pushing on behalf of a particular person.”
Following the first meeting, Eggleston would get a packet of letters from friends and other materials to support their claims for Justice Department consideration. He said that a simple lawyer’s assurance would not have been enough to convince the judges.
“I didn’t want to short-circuit the process,” Eggleston said.
Lanny Davis, who worked as a senior counsel in Clinton White House said that knowing First Lady Hillary Clinton from the Yale Law School would have let him to go to the Oval Office and ask for a pardon for somebody he knew.
“Many, many people – friends, uncles, political friends, everybody else – asked me in the last couple of weeks that I was still there,” Davis said.
The calls keep pouring in. A friend of mine’s son, Davis, called recently to ask if he can get a pardon from the lame-duck Biden. ‘It’s a bit late in the day, which I told him,’ Davis said.
Davis said that pardon of an individual is legal and ethical if it is done after a Justice Department review.
“The precedent of going around the Justice Department is asking for corruption,” Davis said.
What Arguments Do People Make While Seeking A Pardon?
Legal experts said pardon-seekers usually explain how they have turned over a new leaf rather than expressing remorse for their misdeeds.
“The better argument is: ‘Yes, I’ve messed up but I’ve turned my life around,'” Eggleston said, by sitting on the board of charitable organizations or working in soup kitchens.
Obama was interested in the effects of a conviction, for instance, a person is barred from practicing his or her career, Eggleston said. But one that did not make sense was if a person could not own a gun because of a conviction.
“The largest one is ‘I did a one-eighty,’ ” Eggleston said.
Cobb stated that the applicant should express remorse for the offense then start advocating for good deeds since the crime. The rich will discuss their charity, others will discuss how they quit drinking or using drugs.
“What you want to do is just make a more compelling personal argument than the next guy,” Cobb said.
Biden Considering Preemptive Pardons For Trump Targets
Biden is thinking about pardoning people for some crimes that have not been named to shield individuals Trump has vowed to investigate.
Trump, who was indicted twice on federal charges in cases that were dropped after he won the election, has threatened to lock up Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and special counsel Jack Smith. Trump could not simply throw his targets in jail, but his selections for the head of the Justice Department and the FBI have discussed prosecuting his political opponents, which entailed the possibility of indictment.
Trump has threatened to prosecute members of the committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., saying that “they could be in a lot of trouble.”
Schiff said he would advise against such a move, which would be a blanket pardon. In her words, “no reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
However, when Bush senior pardoned Weinberger who was a former defense secretary in the Iran Contra affair, he stated that it was not merely the legal charges but also the “agony of protracted and expensive legal process.”
Biden Reduces Most Death Sentences To Life Imprisonment
Death penalty abolitionists also wanted Biden to grant mass pardons because he ran for president in 2020 on a promise to end the death penalty.Biden’s clemency on Monday replaced the death penalty for 37 of 40 death row inmates with a life sentence without parole. The action was taken as part of a ban on the death penalty that his administration put into practice, but did not apply to terrorists and other killers of a mass nature inspired by hatred.
Jamila Hodge, the CEO of Equal Justice USA said that the commutations dealt with the racism that is rife in the death penalty and the criminal justice system.
‘It is one of many that has stripped the principles of justice in America bare and revealed the failures of the death penalty,’ Hodge said.
However, Biden’s list of the commutations did not include the death sentences for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that resulted in the death of three people and the injury of more than 260 people; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Pardons That Are Contentious Are Often Granted At The Last Moments
The pardon of his son Hunter Biden showed how a single act of clemency can be so much of a controversy. The president pardoned his son of gun and tax charges and other unspecified offenses he could have committed since 2014.
Cobb criticized the ruling for politicizing the pardon power in a manner that will be employed “in the future for favoritism and authoritarianism.”
“The Founders could not have envisioned that their president for his own self interest would be pardoning family members,” Cobb said.
However, Eggleston said he knew why the president made the decision and would have advised the same as the White House counsel.
“He loves his son and here was a guy who committed all these crimes when he was a heavy drug user and he has turned his life around and he falls within the classic concept of people who would be considered for this,” Eggleston said. “I understand people are complaining about it, but I believe they are wrong.”
A few politically charged pardons have become the norm toward the end of a presidency.
Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a fugitive financier, on his last day in office in 2001, although Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had donated $200,000 to the Democratic Party in 2000. Rich had escaped to Switzerland in 1983 when he was charged with more than 50 counts of fraud and tax evasion, amounting to more than $48 million. The Republican dominated House Government Reform Committee looked into the pardon after Clinton left office in January 2001.
“In retrospect, the Marc Rich pardon was not a commendable action,” said Davis, although he said that he concurred with Clinton that the prosecutor was unethical. ‘What I said kindly to my client and old friend President Clinton was, ‘In what universe is a billionaire white man not going to get a fair trial.’
Trump granted a presidential pardon to his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, a month before leaving the office the first time. In the second term, Trump decided to appoint Kushner as his special envoy to France.
Trump might start the term with politically charged pardons of the Jan. 6 defendants, whom he has described as political prisoners.
In March 2023, he posted an all-caps message on social media: “LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO.”
